My Life With 3 Active little boys!: A road trip, family, Thanksgiving and Christmas, all in one weekend!

WOW!! We have had such a crazy few weeks!! First we were preparing for a quick trip our east to visit my brother and his family for Thanksgiving. Then we were busy unpacking and trying to get back into the swing of things again after the trip. Finally I have a few minutes to do some blogging about what's been going on!

First about this "quick" trip we took. This is the first long car trip we have taken with our kids, we have been places that are 3 hours away from our home but no further! So this 15 hour trip was quite daunting to think about. The planning and packing and preparing was so exhausting that I was tired before we even left our house!! Some great tips I learned from this trip though was that driving during the night is the best way to travel with small children! Although I did feel bad that they were missing out on a lot of scenery, it kept me and my husband sane! I also learned that thinking ahead about the times you will be in the car will help you pack! We planned on eating lunch in the car but were never in the car during lunch time, so the bread, peanut butter and jelly were not necessary! On the other hand we brought breakfast food and that was great to have in the hotel room so the kids could eat breakfast while my husband and I got ready for the day. We also over prepared for the kids car activities, we brought coloring books, books, crayons, color wonder markers and books, matchbox cars, etc. When in reality it was dark for 90% of our drive both ways (because we drove at night!) and all they wanted to do was watch movies! So the DVD player and movies was probably all we needed to bring with us!

My nieces at Thanksgiving dinner!

Big E and Little N

More nieces dinner!

Little N helping Papa change the oil in his truck.

The babies wearing their sweaters that Nana made for them!

This was the first Thanksgiving in probably 5 years that my whole family has been together! It was so much fun and a great time to share together. I have two older brother, so with my family of 5, there was a total of 14 kids, and 8 adults (including my parents!) We are praising the Lord that He blessed us with a beautiful weekend! The temperatures were in the high 60's which meant that 14 kids could play outside and not in the house!! While at my brothers house we celebrated Christmas since we were not going to be together this year for Christmas. We did a homemade Christmas, where the presents had to be homemade and we all drew names. The kids drew names among themselves and the adults among themselves. It was so much fun, this is the second year for my family to do this!

My mom had my name and made me a duct tape coupon book! Love it!!

My dad had my husbands name and made him a duct tape sudoku puzzle book! He loves it!!

I had my sister in laws name and made her a shopping bag!

I didn't get very good pictures of the gifts my kids received, but Big E got a picture frame, and Little N received a number memory game. Such cute ideas! We didn't include the babies this year because they are both so small!

The last lesson I learned on this "quick" trip is that Little N gets car sick!! Thankfully we learned this lesson when we were about an hour from home on our way back!! The poor kid was so upset! So along rain, and wind we had to try and clean up a sick little boy and the car! It was all over his car seat and the van seat! Thankfully he was able to use his big brothers booster seat and big brother was able to just sit in the seat. Probably not legally but when you are in a pinch you do what you have to do!!